Worlds Largest Swimming Pool : Pictures : Chile

Like to go for a swim after a tough day at work. You would think twice before you enter this swimming pool. It is one km (3,323 ft) in length, covers an area of eight hectares (20 acres), contains 2.5 million litres of water and guests make use of small boats and kayaks to ferry around the pool. This swimming pool at the resort of San Alfonso del Mar in Algarrobo city on the southern coast of Chile, was recently tagged as the World's largest swimming pool by the Guinness World Records.

Its amazing, the amount of money and time people can invest just to build a pool. It took them five years to build it at a cost of US $1.5 billion.

The technology used by Chilean biochemist Fernando Fischmann, whose Crystal Lagoons Corporation designed the pool, ensures that the pool stays clean. It uses computer-controlled suction and filtration system to keep fresh seawater in permanent circulation, drawing it in from the ocean at one end and pumping it out at the other.

Why would you swim in a pool when the ocean is right next to it? What a waste of resources.

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If you like doing laps in your local pool, hold onto your goggles: the creators of the world's largest swimming pool are on a mission to spread their technology across the world.

Already drawing the crowds in the South American resort of San Alfonso del Mar in Chile, this artificial lagoon and swimming pool is eight hectares in size and contains an incredible 250,000 cubic metres of water. Acknowledged by Guinness World Records as being the world's largest swimming pool, the lagoon trounces all other record holders in the category, including the Orthlieb pool in Casablanca, Morocco, itself a huge 150 metres by 100 metres – the San Alfonso pool is ten times this size, measuring 1km in length. The revolutionary clear water artificial lagoons, transparent to a depth of 35 metres and unprecedented in design and construction methods, are the brainchild of Crystal Lagoons founder, biochemist and Chilean businessman Fernando Fischmann. Equivalent in size to an incredible 6,000 standard domestic pools, details of its technology are to be unveiled for the first time at Cityscape Dubai later this month.

It seems the world has gone crazy for the massive pools, with Crystal Lagoons confirming that they are in advanced planning stages with companies all over the world, in particular in the Middle East, where, says Fischmann, companies are only too keen to take advantage of the way in which the lagoons form "impressive artificial paradises, even in inhospitable areas", and at surprisingly low construction and maintenance costs. Currently in talks with both the Nakheel and the Dubai Property Group, Fischmann will be at Cityscape to outline the technology in detail which involves the use of unlimited volumes of clear water: "This advance provides something that until now was not technically possible - the generation of monumental masses of water in a crystalline state to provide a beach life environment and aquatic sports at the top level."

From the tallest tower to the worlds largest swimming pool, Dubai's international real estate developers continue to push design boundries creating ever more desirable resorts in the quest for global tourism domination.